October 14, 2008

Reviewed by D. Craig Horn.

by Joseph Shattan.
Washington: The Heritage Foundation, 340 pages.

In 1961 the Berlin Wall, the most visible sign of the Cold War, was slapped across the face of a world already weary of living under the threat of annihilation. For more than twenty-five more years the Wall would stand as a reminder of the most prolonged conflict of the 20th century. Finally, in 1989, the Wall came down, and just two years later the Cold War came to an end with the resignation of President Mikhail Gorbachev and the break-up of the Soviet Union.

Joseph Shattan, a former speechwriter for Vice President Quayle, Ambassador Jean Kirkpatrick and Secretary William Bennett, identifies the six people he believes were most responsible for winning the Cold War: Harry Truman, Winston Churchill, Konrad Adenauer, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Pope John Paul II and Ronald Reagan. Shattan writes that Truman and Adenauer deserve credit for saving Western Europe from Soviet domination; that Solzhenitsyn brought the Cold War into a moral focus. He states that Pope John Paul II inspired the nonviolent revolution that began with the rise of “Solidarity” in communist Poland in 1981, and that Ronald Reagan exploited the communist system’s economic and social problems. Shattan’s final hero of the Cold War is Winston Churchill, who recognized the evils of communism at its birth early in the century, but would not have considered himself an architect of victory simply because the policies he advocated were never adopted during his lifetime.

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The book provides a potted biography of each of “architect,” interspersed with reflections on how each played a decisive role in “one of America’s greatest triumphs.” Although recognizing Churchill’s contribution to ultimate victory over communism, Shattan gives way to some revisionist feelings about Churchill’s ability to rally the western powers to action. A well-defined picture is painted of the frustration that Churchill must have felt with successive American presidents, Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower, as they not only failed to heed his warnings and advice, but also to work toward a common policy. Roosevelt felt he could “personally handle Stalin”; Truman and his advisors showed weakness, and Eisenhower subscribed to a containment policy. But all sought to appease the communist regime and not to confront it. Shattan writes glowingly of Churchill’s early recognition of the evils of the Soviet regime and concludes that it was the newly elected American President, Ronald Reagan, who finally accepted the validity of Churchill’s critique. Reagan, he says, adopted a Churchillian course by renewing America’s faith in the righteousness of its cause and seized the initiative.

In 1946, after the end of World War II, Churchill gave his famous “Iron Curtain” speech in Fulton, Missouri. He called for a showdown with Moscow and proposed an Anglo-American alliance to stave off another catastrophe. Neither President Truman nor his successor were prepared to follow his lead. Truman issued an invitation to Stalin to make a similar speech, also in Missouri, and said he would introduce Stalin personally as he had Churchill.

Just a year later, President Truman put forth the “Truman Doctrine,” clearly establishing the United States as the defender of freedom and committing his country to involvement in European affairs. The political tide had begun to change. The Marshall Plan, NATO, the Berlin Airlift and the creation of the Federal Republic of Germany were remarkable in their scope and impact. They were the hallmarks of a maturing American foreign policy. Shattan says 25 June 1950, when communist North Korea invaded the South, was “high water mark” of communist aggression. Truman committed American military might to defend freedom. Containment, however, would not win the Cold War.

It wasn’t until the 1980s that the United States finally displayed a determination to bring down the “Evil Empire” by winning, rather than managing, the Cold War. The author of this new policy was Ronald Reagan, but its inspiration, says our author, was Winston Churchill. Undoubtedly many more books will nominate those responsible for winning the Cold War. Lists of such heroes will abound. It is hard to imagine any without the name of Winston Churchill.